1969-present When executives of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada hosted 12 people from Kansas City in 1969 as part of a gambling junket, it unexpectedly backfired. When their guests, after four days at the resort, boarded the plane to return home, Clark County sheriff’s deputies arrested all of them on charges of vagrancy because…
1966 Suddenly, in the fall, the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC) directed 41-plus casinos to cease operation of specific electronic blackjack machines because they were “experiencing difficulties when played so as to render the devices more liable to win or lose” (Nevada State Journal, Oct. 21, 1966). These 101 devices, available in gambling rooms in Las…
1966 A 34-year-old 21 dealer at a Crystal Bay, Nevada casino at Lake Tahoe slipped $100 worth of gambling chips into her bra each day for a week before getting caught. Once busted (pun intended), she accepted termination of employment there.
1970-1974 During the years Kings Castle in Incline Village, Nevada at Lake Tahoe was open, management routinely used polygraphs on employees, particularly for questions about cheating, theft and employment. Photo from freeimages.com: “No Lies”
1980 Thirty-five years ago, on August 27, an intricate bomb blasted a chasm that spanned six of the 11 floors of Harvey’s Resort Hotel at Lake Tahoe’s South Shore. The explosion hadn’t been intentional but, rather, the result of the best idea experts could conceive of to disarm the instrument. “To this day it remains…
1975 The blaxploitation thriller, Lady Cocoa (also titled Pop Goes the Weasel), starring singer-dancer Lola Folana, San Francisco 49er Gene Washington and Pittsburgh Steeler Joe Green, was filmed in Northern Nevada. The movie climaxes with a snowmobile-versus-car chase through the lobby, around the casino and into the swimming pool of the Kings Castle resort in Incline…
1971 Adult magazine publisher Hugh Hefner announced to the media that in two years’ time, Nevada would be home to a Playboy casino in either Las Vegas or on Lake Tahoe’s South Shore. It didn’t happen, though, for 35 years until, in 2006, the Playboy Club — a hybrid casino and lounge — debuted in the…
1930 Silent film star, Clara Bow, spent one September evening in 1930 playing illegal gambling games at a Lake Tahoe, Nevada casino. Both winning and losing at roulette, craps, 21 and the dice game, chuck-a-luck, she requested a high roll. The Cal-Neva Lodge obliged, allowing her to play as high as $300 per roll or…
1963 Because another route wasn’t available, in August, ranchers drove more than 200 cattle through the casino section of Stateline, Nevada en route to the bovines’ summer range in the California mountains. Photo from freeimages.com, by Debbie Schiel
1954 A brouhaha over bingo made it a memorable year for gambling at Lake Tahoe. To lure as many tourists as possible into their casinos, numerous operators offered big-ticket prizes for winners at summer’s end (most places closed for the winter months). The Ta-Neva-Ho boasted awarding trips to Mexico and Hawaii; the Cal Vada promoted…